


All That Mars Base MCV4 0.9.2 Allows

by nigeltde



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Kidfic, M/M, Pining, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigeltde/pseuds/nigeltde
Summary: You have to live somewhere.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Sam/OFC, past Dean/OMC
Comments: 27
Kudos: 42





	All That Mars Base MCV4 0.9.2 Allows

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when everyone is talking about their exciting space fics at the same time as I'm watching Douglas Sirk. Infinite thanks to [Wetsammywinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester) for her time and advice.

A still and clear morning, the day Dean left his home. As good a day as any for a first like that. He'd been outside before of course, ever since he was tall enough to stand in a suit: he'd been exposed under the remote red sky, inspecting the exo, servicing the pumps, clearing the skin after dust storms. He’d even been as far as the cliffs, just the once and years ago, collecting the carcass of a sampler drone. He and his brother had hiked five long hours out across the scrappy dirt, lightweight crunch of their boots, side by side moving slow but easy and breathing careful so as not to fog their visors. All that distance to reach and skirt the dunes, climb the low hard foothills, thighs aching with unfamiliar strain and as the land rose they craned their heads back and gaped at the runnels and waves and wind-carved striations in the rock. The cliffs teetered, soared above, reaching over them. Sam had grabbed clumsy at Dean's elbow; Dean looked at him and saw his own awe. Sam's eyes sparked at him through the misted air on his visor.

Dean grinned with his heart thumping so hard he worried a moment his suit was losing pressure and Sam had laughed, a sound Dean saw but couldn't hear. They shuffled, turned, looked back towards the ranch, the winking white domes insignificant, the angular blur of the house where it sloped into the ground and far, far beyond that, past the pits and boulders and the whisking dust-devils, at the edge of the rusty plain, something they'd only ever seen on screen: the dark eastern encircling line of the astrobleme dividing the earth and sky. Sam's grip on his arm was dangerously tight. Dean did nothing to shift him. He thought, out of nowhere, so dumb, twenty-one and wild with the sudden explosion of his world, a vision of the land green and lush: me and him, we're kings. We're the future of this place.

The morning Dean left he closed the airlock and the door and sealed them. Crammed his way into the seat, secured his restraints, and flicked the switches he needed to flick. The drone hummed. It had a small, thick, distorting window and through it he saw the ranch sink slowly beneath him. On the porch where they had gathered to watch him go, the blurry outlines of his parents and the others stood waving. 

Five people only. Sam, one arm hooked around his son sitting on his hip, had already gone back inside.

::

Out of deference to the next day, the goodbye party had started early and went right ahead and finished early too. Barely sunset and the food was eaten, the shine drunk. Sara, harried, shepherded her parents into the house, hands out behind them as they tottered down the ramp. Gabor still had a jar wedged under his armpit. He'd been singing all night, folk and cowboy songs about the range and the cattle and the dangerous men, Clark wide-eyed on his knee, trying to join in the refrains. Dean, released at last from a miserably thorough pH report with Janice, leaned back in his chair, yawned, cracked his neck, and met his father's eyes across the table.

"Chemists," his dad said, with deep weary irony. Dean snorted, bent the corner of his mouth up, too tired for anything more. Dabbled his fingers through the little muddy pool of dust and condensation on the tabletop. The laminate was cracking. They'd have to recoat it while he was gone. He wished he'd noticed sooner; not enough time to do it now. There was a lot he’d meant to do. Move the spare rack out to the field, switch the flows in the waste farm, fix Sara’s suit comms.

He’d leave a list in the morning. They’d figure it out without him.

His dad tipped back the dregs in his glass and sucked at his teeth, savouring the taste. "Gonna be a hell of a year for you, son. Do you know where they'll put you first?"

Dean cleared his throat, looked up. "Said something about an adjunct ranch up north."

"You'll show them how it's done. You all packed?"

Dean nodded. That morning. He'd come in well under the mass allowance. It had been a surprise, sitting there on the floor of his room, making account of his belongings, how little he had and how much less he really needed. Clothes, boots, a toothbrush, himself. Couple of photos, folded into his pocket. Sam had leaned long and angular in the doorway watching him, joking _take the lamp. Take the rug. Take my old bunk_ , with his overbright eyes, his brittle pantomime cheer. Dean was worried about him.

He rasped his palm across his cheek, plucked at his shirt, tried to get some air. The fan wasn't on for some reason and they'd trapped a lot of heat today. He'd miss it soon enough, he supposed. Heading north. Down at the end of the porch Sam was crouched by their mother where she snored in her armchair, shaking her knee gently. He hadn't looked Dean's way in an hour; no small feat when the porch was only ten meters long and Dean was the guest of honour.

"We made it a good home for you boys, didn't we?" his dad said, in the silence. It was something he'd asked before, when he had a few in him. He still believed they were pioneers out here alone, in the desert, but maybe when he was drunk the belief was a little thinner.

"Yeah, Dad," Dean said, and his dad smiled, eyes shining. His beard was growing out again, shot with grey. He’d gotten old here. "The best."

His mom was awake now, head bent down to Sam's. Sam laughed, too loud, and she frowned at him. Behind them, framed by the bones of the exo, the cliffs faded purple, sawtooth ridge-line softened by the twilight, the blueing sky. Phobos sank below it, lumpen and barely visible. She moved so fast sometimes it seemed like she was trying to fling herself away too.

Christ, he wished he was drunk. If it wasn't for the horror of being hungover in a drone, he'd be on the floor.

“You’re not being maudlin are you, John?” His mom was weaving her way over, alone, barefoot. Dragging her fingers over the backs of chairs, tabletops. She looked tired, lines carved in her face. Her coat draped like a cloak over her shoulders. Real cotton, one of their old luxuries. Frayed at the hems and lapel. He should have patched it for her. She leaned her hip on the table next to Dean, glanced fondly at his dad. "Leave the boy alone.”

His dad pretended affront. "A man's not allowed to get a little sentimental at a time like this?" 

“Well, I suppose.” She cocked her head, considering; leaned forward and cupped Dean’s cheek with her warm dry hand, smiled at him. He felt like shit about it. Heard his dad sniff, and behind the careless golden muss of his mother's hair, Sara was talking to his brother, her big dark eyes serious, Sam nodding down at her and she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. 

Dean blinked them away, refocused.

“Come on, we should get a photo, all four of us," his mom said, "and Clark," because it still never occurred to her to include the others in her figuring. It was just them for so long. She never truly adjusted. She straightened. "Where's Sam?"

The porch was empty, but at the end of the chute rose a glow from the first farm, pink in the ambient dust.

“We can take it in the morning," Dean said; thought that maybe he could get away with not seeing Sam at all. And if it made Sam mad, well. Sam was already mad.

"My good boy," she said. Dean shook his head, and she smiled at him again, so sweet it made him ache. “Always have been, always will be.”

"Mom," he choked, on an upswell of guilt, his cowardice. She pinched his cheek.

"All grown up," she said, and then despite his being twenty-six years old and all grown up said to him the thing she'd said most to him since he was a child: "Go on, go find your brother."

Dean nodded, mute, and they said their goodnights and left, arm in arm. Dean slumped back in his chair and watched them go. Dark and light. Strong, fit. They chose this place and beat it. Willed life into it. All his life they were doing something hard and grand and he made himself into the same shape and believed it too. What else was there to do? Who else was going to keep Sam alive while they built the place? Keep him happy, keep him here while he grew unbound, while he burned through their precious bandwidth with adventure books and histories, and pictures of a better life; while he learned dissatisfaction. He was unlike the rest of them. He was sharp-boned and more alive than them, than the people in their books, on their screens, the vanishingly few visitors they'd had, three or four dotted across two decades. He was ten steps ahead of Dean, always; he was beyond them all. He’d held fava pods in his hand, fresh and green, broken open to the beans and the damp white fur inside, looked up at him rapt and joyous and slung his arm over Dean’s shoulders and Dean had watched him and known that it still wouldn’t be enough.

Maybe it would have been; but what was the point in wondering. Their mother had skinned the last frame of exo. They'd had four hundred consecutive days without error or alarm. The potatoes had flowered. The phase ticked over to expansion prep, and the next family had come: Sara, and her parents; and then, with orbital inevitability, Clark. 

Dean took a deep breath and pushed himself up, headed for the chute. It felt smaller than usual, a tunnel through the falling sunset. The farm, when he closed the lock, felt bigger, the stacked racks of seedlings stretching back, the air thick and compost-ripe. He lingered, soaked in the faint electric buzz of insect life. The diaphragm clicked down slowly as the air cooled.

No sign of his brother.

"Sam?"

A shush, from way down the end. Dean found him crouched next to a potting bench, shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Curled on the under shelf, in his elephant pyjamas, was Clark. Soil, true soil, dirtying his hands, his cheek. Growing up amongst the green. It was right, Dean thought, that he had it better than they had. Even in a place like this, that was how it was supposed to be. That was what a family was supposed to give its children.

"How long's he been like that?"

Sam flicked him a glance. "Half an hour, Sara says. She was watching the feed. He ducked out when the goodbyes started. He always knows when it's bedtime."

"He's a smart kid."

Sam reached out, brushed Clark's hair off his forehead. "Yeah," he said, soft. "I'd better—" He picked him up in a gentle rag-doll flop, and stood. Clark yawned, huge, hooked his little arms around Sam's neck, blinked over his shoulder. Dean smiled at him.

"Hey, sprout.”

“Look,” Clark mumbled, holding up his fist.

"What have you got?" Dean uncurled his fingers over his own palm, caught the hard black spiral as it dropped. “Wow, a millipede.”

"Yeah," said Clark, serious. “I found it.” 

Sam craned his neck back and stared at Dean. Cheek to rounded cheek with his son. Janice swore he resembled Sara most, but Dean, who had spent more time looking at Sam than any other person, knew better. Sara’s eyes, maybe, but Sam’s high bones waiting underneath. It made Dean glad, to see them together. Chasing down the hallways. Bent intent over the seedlings. Sam, dangling him by the ankle over algae pools, making him shriek with laughter. He’d miss that.

He stepped back, tossed the millipede towards the compost. "You did a great job, bud. You want me to put you to bed?"

“Yes,” Clark said, and Sam murmured _no_ , queer tilt to his voice. Looked away, finally, half his face buried in Clark's hair. 

"No, stay here. Okay? I'll be right back," he said, and headed for the house, Clark screwing up his face, grabbing at Sam’s collar, talking, talking. He had a lot to say. Sam had been the same.

He wasn't right back. Dean told the lights to dim and stayed out there anyway. Walked a circuit through the farms with the racks shadowed and looming. Checked on the fly colonies, dozy and slow; skirted the dark dank pools of the oxhouse. Right to the back, to that hard-won half-acre. Last week the first thin and daring blades of corn poked through, rising above the softer patches of soy. In the dusk it looked fuzzy; something you'd want to run your hand over, feel life thrill against your palm.

They would run the test harvest without him. It was years he and Sam had picked over this ground, decontaminating, softening, seeding microbes, mulching algae, reseeding. Turning red together in the dust. Collapsed on their backs, shirtless, sweaty, watching the moon tumble across the sky, the spring clouds ghost down magical and white from the north. How many days like that, alone in the reaches with his brother. Best time of his life. Once, Sam had rolled onto his side and made Dean a clown, smeared his red thumb across Dean's eyebrows and, grinning wide, drew circles on his cheeks. Dean's heart had just about launched out of his chest.

The house. From this far out, at this angle, the transport drone, waiting stark by the airlock, was impossible to miss. A light on the top blinked blue on off on off, maddening. In a few days he'd be doing the same prep work in some other quadrant for some other family, a man and a woman and kids on the way, already burdened by the travel and shocked by how the bleakness of the land beat all telling of it. A father who looked down and said _well, son. You gotta live somewhere._

He did have to live somewhere, and he couldn't live here anymore. He needed newness. He needed to see new things, a different horizon, a different dome pattern at least. He needed to make money for the first time. Meet people he wasn't related to in some fashion. Make a friend. No place no thing here he could look at or touch or walk past that didn't have decades of memories baked into it. Here it was Sam cried disconsolate over the scrawny and disfigured remains of the last chicken. Here it was his father beamed at him as the deep bore started flowing.

Here it was Dean got laid the first and only time, an abrupt and one-sided experience with a hydroengineer flown over at ruinous cost five years back, when the pumps failed. A morose man whose short dense curls had clung damp around Dean's fingers raising the smell of sweat and who afterwards had stood wiping his mouth and turned him and sent him euphoric and dislocated back to the room he shared with his brother, lying there as Sam whispered _holy shit Dean_ in awed teenaged wonder from the bunk below, with his skin turning clammy and the knowledge creeping up on him that that was it until expansion, if someone even came then that he could bear. He'd held himself apart for weeks after, afraid of what touch would do to him. He'd looked at his brother, as he’d always looked. He curdled and never recovered.

Sam was waiting for him in the first farm, leaning his hip against a bench, his arms folded across his chest. Dean studied him in the soft grey twilight and he allowed himself to be studied, eyes glittering, his face carefully neutral, sharp lines of his cheeks and jaw and his ragged hair kinking over his forehead, under his ears. He'd gotten so tall. Felt like it had happened fast, looking back. But every day had been as long as the previous.

A year between now and the next time Dean would see him. He’d be someone different again and Dean would have nothing to do with it. 

“Hey,” he said. Thought he saw Sam's chin tremble. 

“Hey.” Sam looked over his shoulder, back at the house. Maybe Sara was waiting for him tonight. They’d been catching up less often, Sam had told him, but it still happened. “I—”

"Give me a hand with something, would you?"

Sam blinked at him a moment and nodded, pushed himself upright. "What's up?"

"I want to get that spare rack to the field."

Sam frowned. "It'll be months until we need it," he said; but fell in, when Dean started towards the junk pile. 

"I meant to do it last week. Thought it might be easier if I was here."

"Well," Sam said. "You can always stay." He tried to pull it into humour at the last minute, smiled tight and too quick. There were bags under his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping.

"Clark go down okay? I know how he gets when he's tired."

"Yeah, I just read him..." Sam trailed off, dragged his hand over his face. Gesture he picked up from their dad after Clark was born; too old for him, but he was growing into it. "That hopper book, you know. He wants you to take it with you."

"I'll tell him he should keep it safe for me."

"Thanks. You got that side?"

The racks were the biggest pain in the ass on the whole ranch. Overmassed but top-heavy and cheap, with rubber that had degraded almost out of the box. They folded it down down as much as they could, settled at each end. Dean toed off the locks and juddered it across the ground until the wheels kicked free and spun, locked themselves at a quarter-angle from the direction they were supposed to travel. 

"Did Sara have a good time?"

"Yeah," Sam said, resetting his grip lower and squaring his shoulders, looking behind as he pulled. A pause, and he heaved in a breath. The herculean effort of small talk. "I think so. She's worried about Clark. And the cultivars, they still haven't sprouted. She spent half of last night moving the humidifier around."

"She's worried about you." Dean had seen her concern; could almost love her for it. He trusted her at least, to care about his brother. "Watch out for the tubes."

Sam kicked them aside and they bonked, hollow and plastic, against the bottom of the skin. "She thinks I'm gonna stow away," he said, and grit his teeth and bodily hauled the rack up and over the jamb, into the lock.

“I dare you to try to fit in that thing. That would be hilarious,” Dean said, and stumbled, yanked along, bumping the wheels up and over. He was sweating again, his hands slipping. Back in the oxhouse. Edging the pools the rushes whispered as the locks opened, closed. The air here was denser, dizzying, the pressure too high. Sex in here, Sam had once confided in him, crimson, back when he and Sara were still in that first torturous physical phase, was almost _too_ good: made his head spin, made her heavy and wet, gasping wherever he touched her.

Dean had never found it worth the feeling of exposure, the hard rammed floor and the humidity and the ripe rotty algae smell. Maybe it was different with another person. He'd tried to look them up one night, in bed, on his screen, throbbing and sick-hot with resentment and guilt. But the feed was scrubbed.

The field lock, finally. They heaved the rack through and onto the berm and the wheels jammed up, skewing, and Dean gasped _wait, wait_ , digging his heels in before it could teeter down, yanked it sideways, cursing as his hands twisted in the bars. They hitched it inch by inch down and over to the pumps, scoring deep tracks in the dirt. 

Dean kicked the locks on. "That’ll do. You can bring some tracks out when you need to move it."

They stepped back and surveyed it: lopsided and out of place, but out of the way. It would be good to have, when the time came. Sam turned his eyes on Dean. “You happy now?”

“Ecstatic.” Dean grinned at him and sucked on the webbing of his hand, where he got pinched. Salt and alloy. He spat into the dirt. “You gotta convince Mom to replace it this year, it’s the worst of the lot.”

"With what money?"

"With what I send back.”

Sam nodded, wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "They gonna pay you much?”

“More than what I get paid now.”

Sam rolled his eyes, turned to look out over the field. Tilted his head up towards the zenith. The line of his neck stretched out. Unreadable. It had been the quiet terror of Dean's life, watching him turn dirt with his eyes on the stars.

Funny how things ended up.

“Are you excited?” Sam said. “About getting out there?"

Dean shrugged. Felt the drone blinking, blinking behind him. Barely seemed capable of getting him out of the crater, let alone carrying him three thousand kilometers. “Sure.”

“Meet people?”

“Yeah.”

“Just. Be safe, okay?”

“I will.”

“A woman died in the Hellas expansion last week. Hypoxia, slow hypoxia. On average someone dies every eighty-four days, you know. I looked it up.” 

“I’m shocked,” Dean said, dry. Sam narrowed his eyes.

“That's excluding the catastrophic failures.”

“I won’t even be working with enough people for a failure to count as catastrophic.” 

“If you’re not gonna take this seriously--” 

“I'll be safe,” Dean said. “Quit talking about how I’m gonna die, Sam, I’ll be safe. I promise,” but Sam frowned and shrugged it off, mouth twisting sour, stalked over to the edge of the field. Crouched, stiff and broad, and curled his fingers through the emergent soy. The leaves bowed obediently, muted green in the dim overhead lights. 

“Well,” Dean said, after a while. Dragged in a deep breath. “Early start tomorrow.”

No sign Sam heard. Dean sighed again, rubbed his eyebrow. Looked over the pumps and outside; the faint long walls of the house, the last dregs of sunset showing up the vast shadowed horizon. They were a drop of water in dead red plain. He’d used to think that made them special. What a small and deluded life.

Sam shifted.

“I keep having this dream,” he said, toneless. His face bent down at his hands. “I'm out here by myself, working, you know. You're gone. I can tell, you’ve been away for ages. I get some flint or something caught under my nail. Really deep and I pull it out and I start... leaking I start-- everything inside me just hisses away. Like there's a tear in the skin and before I boil up I look back and I'm just. Standing there. Mixing topsoil.” He laughed, bleak. Lifted his head to stare out across the field. “Jesus Christ. You're not coming back.”

“Of course I'm coming back,” Dean said, although it was true that part of him had fantasised about staying out there, an obscure guilty and bitterly lonely part that had imagined for himself a tribe of new friends and a world of harsh storybook adventure and the scarring over of all wounds. To return, if ever, celebrated and impervious. Believing in something.

“No,” Sam said. “You'll meet someone.”

“Yeah, with all my wisdom and experience, I'll be beating them away.”

Sam glared over at him, jaw set. “I know that you will, Dean. I know what you look like. I know who you are, and I know how easy it is to fall in with someone when you've never met anyone.” He flushed, dull; flicked his gaze away.

“Well.” Dean lifted his hands and dropped them, helpless. “If that happens feel free to say I told you so.” 

No response. Dean sighed, stepped across to stand beside him, looked down at the back of his head, the soft untidy fall of his hair. He curled his fingers into a fist. “It’s gonna be better this year, with expansion and all. Busier. Just keep going and focus on the good stuff.”

Sam nodded. “I will,” he said, and looked up. “I am. I'm trying. I'm really trying.” Pained, pleading look on his face, like Dean could tell him how to turn off all the ill-fit parts of himself, how to smooth and gentle his soul; grow flowers. Should have been Dean who Sara fell in with, dutiful and homely. Let Sam go. Everyone knew it. 

“Hey,” he said. There was a weight in his chest trying to kill him. “Look at it this way. Now you're the good son.”

“Oh, thank god,” Sam said, flat. “That's always been the dream, to supplant you as the favoured one.”

“Nah, that happened the second you gave them Clark.”

“Why do you think I did it?” Sam said. Tried a smile. Dean smiled back; lost it, as Sam lost his, face falling hollow. He looked wretched. Time was Dean might have pulled him up and hugged him, tugged his hair or punched his shoulder or put a cold hand up his shirt, make him shriek or squirm and forget his griefs. They were older now and grown into their bodies and a habitual distance even in the poor and crowded spaces of the ranch, and he missed being able to turn Sam's mood by scruffing through his hair and he missed Sam. He missed his brother. He wanted his brother to be his again in that old innocent way and he wanted to take Sam into a dark corner and make him his in a new way. The truth was he wanted to touch, he just wanted to touch, he wanted Sam to know him and he wanted to know Sam and what he felt like, his skin in soft places and how hot it was and how he'd breathe to be touched there and he wanted to see how that felt on Sam's face and he wanted Sam to press him down and show him everything he’d learned without Dean and he wanted to believe that that would be enough to fix him, that it would make him someone whole and strong and not the stunted faithless son he was.

Sam rose. Hands in his pockets. He looked past Dean, behind at the drone. Face drawn, young. He always looked too young when he was sad. 

“If there was something,” he said, quiet, colour rising in his cheeks, “that I could do. To make you happy here. I'd do it. I'd do anything.”

Dean’s heart bent in his chest. Breath gone tight and sore. Sam wouldn’t look at him. Christ, he loved this kid. “You could, Sammy,” he said, careful. It hurt. “But it’s not about being happy.”

Sam huffed a laugh, dead and empty. Sniffed, blinked up at the sky. Breathed deep. “Right.”

Dean studied his profile. His set jaw, the faltering line of his mouth. “Remember that time we went to the cliffs?” 

Sam ran a hand across his face, through his hair, glanced over. Half wild but he seemed okay. He’d be okay. He’d always been stronger than Dean.

“Of course.”

“I used to think. Me and you, you know. In this place. I used to have this idea that we were meant to be here.”

“But not anymore,” Sam said, slow. Dean shrugged, bent the corner of his mouth down. “No one is _meant_ to be here. I've been saying that forever.”

“Never told you I was smart,” he said; felt bad about it, making light. “It’s my own fault, Sam. I should have listened to you more, I guess. I’m sorry.”

Sam nodded, bowed his head. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Well, I am,” Dean said. Scuffed his foot in the dirt. He’d be gone in eight hours. This close it was hard to believe it would actually happen: that his legs would carry him in there, that his finger would press the button. He should go inside. He should get some sleep. He didn't want to.

He told the lights to turn off and the dark poured in through the skeletal web of the exo. He folded himself down to the ground. After a minute Sam followed him. Shuffled to get comfortable, hooked his arms around his legs. Close enough Dean could feel his warmth. They sat like that, in the field they made together, in the night, in the black and the infinite stars. Their shoulders touched, pressed. They kept breathing. Sam put his chin on his knees. Dean drew his fingers through the soil, sifted out a pebble, small, round, smoothed by countless dust storms. In the west Phobos rose again.

The end.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback/concrit welcome.
> 
> [Rebloggable tumblr post for those so inclined.](https://nigeltde-fic.tumblr.com/post/189838675736/all-that-mars-base-mcv4-092-allows-4886-words)


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